President Barack Obama is set to address the nation about American efforts against Islamic State after meeting with the National Security Council at the Pentagon.
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Despite his ongoing criticism of Trump, whose judgment has come under increasing question within the Republican party after a sustained attack on the parents of a slain US Army captain, Obama said Trump would receive the intelligence briefings traditionally given to presidential nominees.
Following an hours-long meeting of his National Security Council at the Pentagon on Thursday, the U.S. president said Trump’s broad-brush rhetorical attacks on Muslims worldwide, his enthusiasm for “bomb [ing] the shit” out of Isis and his proposed ban on Muslim immigration would “backfire”. While they may not have been directed by the group, the attackers were reportedly inspired by IS. “And I hope the Republicans are watching closely or it’s going to be taken away from us”.
“That, I think, points to the need for us to not just have a military strategy, not just have a traditional counter-terrorism strategy that’s created to bust up networks catch folks before they carry out their attacks, although those still are necessary and we have to be more and more sophisticated about how we carry those out”.
“ISIL has not had a major successful offensive operation in either Syria or Iraq in a full year”, he said.
US -backed ground forces in Iraq and Syria have recaptured about 40% of the ground ISIL had seized.
The meeting follows a string of policy decisions by the White House to expand USA military involvement against the Islamic State group. “The notion that we would somehow start now, in this high-profile way, and I announced it to the world even as we are looking into the faces of other families whose loved ones are being held hostage-and say to them that we don’t pay ransom-defies logic”.
Obama blamed the Syrian government of Bashar Assad for the civilian crisis in Syria. But the country is still “significantly safer” than it would’ve been without USA involvement. “It is deplorable”, he said.
He added that the United States and worldwide partners needed to do more to stop the spread of ISIS networks across the world and prepare for more threats in America.
The military campaign isn’t enough, Obama said, adding that the United States and its allies have pledged $2 billion to help build up the Iraqi government. But the complications for pregnant women and their children can be severe. Obama said. “If Mr. Trump is suggesting that there is a conspiracy theory that is propagated across the country, including in places like Texas where typically it is not Democrats who are in charge of voting booths, that’s ridiculous”.
Obama said the $400 million paid in cash to Iran earlier this year was not ransom to release US hostages.
“We have to try”, he said.
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Obama, a Democrat who endorsed his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 White House race, has made clear his dismay over Trump, a NY businessman who has proposed temporarily banning Muslims from entering the United States and building a wall on the USA border with Mexico. The ideology emanates from the Middle East and appeals to a very small proportion of Muslims, he said, but the ideology “has been turbocharged over the internet, and combating that will take time as old orders collapse and new ones are born”.
